LastMinuteLucie and the search for time

Posts tagged ‘cake’

I have had such little time recently because of my teacher training, that I literally haven’t made anything. However, on Friday I took a little me time and went to a Trefoil Guild meeting for the first time in two months.

This month we were decorating cake pops and, as well as eating far too many, I made these for my girls:

They wouldn’t have won any beauty contests, but they didn’t last long enough to be entered – shortly after these photos they were devoured.:)

I truly have had no time at all for blogging in the last 6 weeks of term – instead I have expended energy on being a better teacher. However, Oldest Daughter’s birthday rolled around again and with it her demands for a particular shaped / decorated cake.

I am beginning to feel that my daughter’s expectations are outstripping my expertise, but I gave it my best shot and, honestly, I am pretty chuffed with the outcome – even if she did say ‘Eeugh that icing looks gross’ as I was rolling it out, having spent time colouring and arranging it to blend in a tortie kind of way…

Pattern and sickness have floored me this last four weeks, but a second course of antibiotics is helping with the latter…

Oldest daughter had another birthday in the month of pattern and here is her cake:

straight lines are not my forte, but both Oldest Daughter and I was pleased with the outcome. It tasted great – though the textures of cake, jam, fondant and fizzy sweet all together were interesting 😀

I am lucky having a job that runs term time because I get to spend time with my girls and spend time with myself, away from the rat race every few weeks.

In the spirit of making time to create I have issued myself a challenge for this first week of the break – a ‘make’ a day.

Here ‘make’ covers all art forms I am interested in: painting, drawing, sewing, cooking and so on and includes all media: beauty products, recycled materials, paint, food, fabric etc. As I have an overflowing mending basket I may allow myself to include these pieces if I make a change to a garment as well as fix it.

So.

Day One was yesterday. I went the fancy nails route.

I love fancy nails. It’s the miniature art thing.

I really never thought I would be any good at painting with a four hair brush, but apparently I can. Thank goodness really, because my youngest daughter requested leopard print nails! Her faith in my abilities is gratifying and I was glad I could oblige. I used a yellow gold base and, lacking black, used navy blue polish to paint each little spot.

handpainted leopard print nails

My older daughter had a nail art kit for her birthday which consisted of fake nails and some glitter bits and pieces. We had fun with glueing on the nails first of all – she was terrified she’d never get them off again and I suppose they would feel weird the first time you wear them ever. We got over that bump and I went for teal with one nail in pink, each tipped with teeny tiny beads from the kit.

cupcake nails

I think they look like hundreds and thousands. I may have to make cake.

No plans yet for today. Perhaps an opportunity will present itself. Perhaps I will have to make time.

My oldest daughter had a couple of friends to stay last night – a birthday party of sorts – usually referred to, without any sense of irony, as a sleepover.

Lack of sleep aside, it gave me many more opportunities for small bouts of creativity.

before disaster struck

I watched my daughter use an icing bag recently, with royal icing in it (she has her own blog Ilovecakeandcakelovesme@wordpress.com) and I thought ‘I’ll give that a go, looks easy enough.’

Well I was right – if you can use a pen you can pretty much use an icing bag. Unfortunately for me my royal icing mix was a little soft, so when I tried to lift my handsome blue owls off the greaseproof and place them on my little squares of iced cake for the party bag, they broke spectacularly! Being of a waste not want not nature, I used them as sprinkles. They made a change from hundreds and thousands…

we ❤ bath bombs

I like to let my girls spend time doing nothing.

What I mean by that is I like to allow them time to find something to do by themselves, something unscheduled or not adult led. It’s worked a treat – except that when they come up with ideas for activities when their friends come, I can hardly say no.

With her party in mind and not wanting her guests to be bored, my daughter took due note of the Blue Peter instructions (see link below) for making bath bombs with bicarb, cream of tartar, food flavouring and colouring and water. It was like making bicarb sandcastles. As with sandcastles though, the water content is crucial.

When we freed these from the silicone mould we had a bit of crumblage, so I wrapped them artistically in foil to maintain the heart shape for the party bag and instructed the girls to ensure they opened them over the bath!

I’m sure they will fizz beautifully at the appropriate moment…

When I was a girl and ‘Why Don’t You’ was still on TV, shrinking crisp packets in the oven was practically a national pastime.

I can’t actually remember what we did with them after they were shrunk, but I was happy to see this particular fashion come full circle, apparently featuring on ‘Totally Rubbish’ recently. (that link doesn’t seem to be available, sorry.) Basically, heat your oven to around 120* C and line baking sheets with greaseproof paper before putting your (plastic) crisp packets on. Some shrink quicker than others. They will curl, but you can flatten them when you take them out, under another sheet of greaseproof but remember they are H.O.T !!

My only recommendation is: really make sure you preheat the oven and then watch them like the proverbial hawk. 30 seconds can mean the difference between a perfectly shrunk recognisable crisp packet and an unrecognisable blob of strange stretchy springy plastic.

I love googly eyes. They just make anything they are attached to funny. We made these fellas into brooches with a little safety pin duct- taped to the back.

what just happened?I think we just got zapped!

Finally, I have an odd penchant for patterned fingernails. I think they just appeal to the paintbrush holder in me – an opportunity to do something in miniature (remember, I bought the magnifier light).

Not so much a case of making time, but a case of having to – my daughter’s birthday is tomorrow. I have shoehorned in a decorated cake as well as the owl motif t-shirt I’ve been meaning to make for ooh, let’s see, a fortnight…

Anyway, here is the cake.

owl on a branch – in case you were wondering…

You can see I went for sweets as the easy option, but I love the way he’s come out. I find him most amusing.

The thing that took the longest however was the t-shirt. Here are the ingredients:

a lovely french blue t-shirt from Primark, various pieces of old clothes fabric from my ever expanding stash and some bondaweb.

I took inspiration from the wrapping paper I’ve used on my daughter’s gifts so far ( her first phone, house keys…you can see we are growing up here) and drew some freehand shapes on the fabric. This first attempt I wasn’t very happy with – the pink stripe is way too strong.

a bit Batman and Robin this one

After that I got into the zone and the fabric started to make sense, inasmuch as the patterns began to show their affiliations, and I put together the pieces using bondaweb. Finally the built up owls took their place on the fabric branch and made this lovely design.

Unfortunately I won’t fit into this t-shirt, but as I’m pretty sure my daughter will like it we should be ok….. I am still contemplating hand stitching the edges of the motif, but for now I am happy with it and my daughter – who knows me well – will understand if I take it back at a later stage to add a little more.